


here in the eye of a hurricane

by Rhovanel



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Flirting, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Trespasser, Romantic Gestures, Sad and Sweet, Slow burn friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 16:26:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16141055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhovanel/pseuds/Rhovanel
Summary: The elf is too damn pretty for his own good.





	here in the eye of a hurricane

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wintertree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wintertree/gifts).



The elf arrives on his doorstep at the beginning of a summer storm.

Thom has been camping in an abandoned cabin in the Anderfels while he clears out swarms of darkspawn in the nearby caves. He had welcomed the mission: simple, straightforward, and solo.

He doesn’t welcome the sudden arrival of a stranger.

“Ah, my dear Warden,” says the elf. “Won’t you let me in?”

Thom squares his shoulders. “Not until you tell me who you are.”

The elf pushes back the hood of his cloak, revealing long blonde hair streaked with silvery grey. “Let us just say that I followed the song of a little nightingale.”

“Meddling spymaster,” Thom mutters under his breath. He looks back at the elf. He is lean and lithe, and a simple vallaslin curls down one cheek. The lines at the corners of his eyes and lips betrays a lifetime of laughing.

“Zevran Arainai, I presume.”

Zevran’s face lights up. “You have heard of me, yes? Then we are hardly strangers and you must invite me in at once.”

Thom sighs but finds himself moving aside to let him in. Zevran sweeps into the cabin and casts a disapproving glance around.

“Are we living like darkspawn now in order to fight them? Are these new orders from Weisshaupt? Why was I not informed?” He grins broadly. “I do love an undercover mission.”

Thom refuses to rise to the bait, crossing his arms and frowning. “Why are you here?” he asks.

“Ah, but that would be telling, and where would the fun be in that?”

Thom searches his memory for what he knows about Zevran. _Grey Warden. Trained assassin. Fought with the Hero of Ferelden. Rumoured to be the Black Shadow who single-handedly dismantled the Antivan Crows._

Zevran picks up one of the little wooden figurines Thom carves for the children in the villages. “I have seen this work before,” he says slowly. “All over Thedas, the children talk of a kindly stranger who leaves toys in his wake.”

Thom shrugs. “Something to pass the time,” he says evasively.

“Hmmm,” Zevran replies, fixing him with a knowing gaze before turning the wooden horse over in his hands. “Wonderful,” he says. Thom opens his mouth to deflect the compliment, but Zevran winks at him. “I do love a man who is good with his hands.”

Thom groans. Why Leliana sent the elf here, he has no idea.

“What is our plan?” Zevran asks, sitting down on a rickety chair with more grace than the furniture deserves.

“ _Our_ plan?” Thom echoes. “I’m hunting darkspawn. You can do whatever it is you came here to do. I won’t stop you from tagging along if you insist.”

“How charming,” Zevran smiles. “Why yes, I would like to join you on a fine day’s outing. Shall I pack a picnic, perhaps?"

“For fuck’s sake, do you ever stop talking?” Thom says exasperatedly.

“Ah, for the sake of a fuck, my dear Warden, there is little I cannot be persuaded to do.”

Thom snorts, shaking his head with a rueful smile, and Leliana’s words rise suddenly in his memory.

_He used to make me laugh._

 

* * *

 

Zevran does go with him to hunt darkspawn, and Thom has to admit that he fights well. Quick on his feet, he makes fast work of the peripheries of the swarm while Thom charges into the middle. More than once, he saves him from certain injury with a quick flash of his knives, hurtling through the air to land squarely in the throats of the genlocks that surround him.

“Thanks,” he says gruffly after one fight. “I’d have been in trouble without you.”

“You are most welcome,” Zevran replies. “It is what I am here for, after all.”

“Is it?” he asks. He still hasn’t got a straight answer from the elf.

“If you like,” Zevran says with a smile. He wipes his knives on the grass before sheathing them on his back. “Where to now?”

“There’s another cave to the north. We should head there.”

Zevran chatters constantly as they walk, telling tales that seem more incredulous than the one before. Thom finds himself laughing regularly.

“And that,” Zevran says with a flourish of his hands, “is why you must check your knives before you apply the poison.” He pauses. “And be careful where you put your tongue.”

Thom laughs again. “You are either the world’s best assassin or the worst one.”

“You should laugh more often,” Zevran says suddenly. Thom raises an eyebrow at him. “It is a rich laugh, deep and full like a good cup of Antivan coffee.”

“That is a terrible line,” Thom groans. “Does that actually work on people?”

“Is it working on you?” Zevran says with a flutter of his eyelashes.

“Stop trying to charm me,” he growls.

“I am simply making conversation! Am I to blame if I have a charming disposition?”

Thom shakes his head, but can’t seem to stop the smile that lingers on his lips.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes they pass through one of the small, rare outposts that exist outside of the Anders cities. The Anderfels are a harsh region, ill-suited for farming or livestock, and the people are as grim as their surroundings, hardened by an eternity of vigilance against the darkspawn. Zevran whirls through the villages like one of Thom’s wooden spinning tops. He charms the people with easy smiles and outrageous flirting, leaving the young people blushing and the elders shaking their heads. Thom watches him curiously. He really is too damn pretty for his own good.

“You have a question, yes?” Zevran asks on their way out of town, twirling a flower he’d been gifted by a particularly smitten baker.

“Leliana did say you were a terrible flirt.”

“And you are wondering why?” He pauses for a moment, raising an eyebrow. “Or do you disapprove?”

“Not really,” Thom says. “Just…curious, I suppose. We’re very different people.”

“I could tell you that I am simply naturally charming. I could tell you that I am shallow and focused on pleasure. Or I could tell you that I occasionally tire of dealing death and deceit with every turn, and I wish to leave a smile in my wake rather than a slashed throat.”

“I didn’t figure you for a romantic.”

Zevran snorts. “Hardly. But why do you leave little trinkets for the children of Thedas?”

“Atonement,” Thom says without thinking.

“Aha,” Zevran says with a soft smile. “You wish to compensate for what you have taken from the world by restoring something to it. We are not so different, you and I.”

He stops for a moment, looking out over the grim, dusty landscape.

“And is that not what the Grey Wardens teach us? That for every action there is a counter-action? For every moment of war, there will be victory, and for every time of peace, there must be vigilance?”

The final part of the creed hangs silently in the air between them.

“You are wiser than you first appear,” Thom says.

“Wise?” Zevran replies. “I have never been wise. But I had the good fortune to travel with people who were.”

Thom sighs. “So did I, for a time,” he says. “Good people, who were trying their best against terrible odds.” He turns to face him. “But I have never met anyone quite like you.”

Zevran laughs, leaning over and tucking his flower behind Thom’s ear. “And you think you cannot be charming.”

 

* * *

 

In the evenings, Thom works on his carvings by the firelight. He often feels Zevran’s gaze on him.

“Do you always have something in mind when you start carving?”

“No,” Thom replies. “I usually just start whittling the edges, and eventually it tells me what it wants to be.”

“Interesting. So what will this one be?”

“You’ll know when it’s finished,” Thom says. “I should have known you wouldn’t have any patience.”

“You are mistaken,” Zevran says, his gaze suddenly serious in a way Thom isn’t sure how to interpret. “Patience is a trait I know well.” He shifts his gaze to his knives. “It is a requirement of the job, after all.”

“Do you still think of yourself as an assassin?”

“I am many things. Assassin, thief, Crow, a black shadow in the night, and a Grey Warden. Do you not also have names you have left behind?”

“Names, yes,” Thom says. “Left behind?” He sighs. “They still haunt me every day."

He gestures at the block of wood in his hands. “We can change shape and form and call ourselves by something different, but in the end, they’re just scars that the past carves upon us.”

“How melancholy,” Zevran says, “though not, I admit, untrue.” He reaches across to pick up one of the finished figurines by Thom’s feet, a small wooden halla. “But a scar can be beautiful, can it not?”

“Perhaps.”

“Come now, are we not both beautiful scarred men?”

“I don’t know if you’re complimenting me or yourself,” Thom grumbles. “But I learnt a long time ago that you cannot run from the past, any more than you can escape the future.”

Zevran meets his gaze across the fire. “Do you dream?” he asks.

Thom knows he’s referring to the Calling. “Sometimes,” he says carefully. “You?”

“Sometimes,” Zevran echoes. They are silent for a time, but that silence is filled with more understanding than any words could achieve.

“Well,” Zevran says brightly. “If we are trapped by the twin tempests of past and future, then all we can do is find the pleasure in the present.”

“Sounds more like a gilded cage,” Thom mutters.

“We have both been in cages,” Zevran says. He smiles at Thom. “This is not one, I think.”

Thom looks back down at the wood in his hands, and suddenly knows exactly what it wants to be.

 

* * *

 

“Ugh,” Zevran groans, wiping darkspawn blood from his face. “Was this not supposed to be a small swarm?”

“Size can be misleading,” Thom says.

“I most certainly hope not,” Zevran says, looking him up and down with a leer.

Thom can’t help but laugh. “You’d flirt your way out of certain death, wouldn’t you?”

Zevran raises an eyebrow. “Ah, but that is how the Warden and I first met! Have I not told you that story? It is a good one.”

“Do you miss her?” Thom blurts out. They haven’t discussed the Hero of Ferelden, but he’s curious.

Zevran sighs, turning away to look at the horizon. “Like the sun misses the moon.”

“What was she like?”

“She…she felt deeply. Rage, joy, love: they consumed her. She did not always make smart decisions, but she followed her feelings, all the way to the end.”

He reaches across to caress the griffon emblazoned on Thom’s shield.

“I would have followed her anywhere, and perhaps I still do. Perhaps I shall see her again, someday. At the gates of the Black City itself.”

“If we make it to the Black City,” Thom says, “I think the world will fucking owe us one.”

Zevran laughs with genuine delight. “That it will, my dear Warden. That it will.”

 

* * *

 

“That was the last of them,” Thom says, surveying the mass of darkspawn corpses.

They’ve been travelling together for weeks now. Thom knows he needs to turn back towards Weisshaupt, but he’s dragging his feet. Yet after they take out the last of the swarms in the region he’d been assigned, he can’t put it off any longer.

“There are always more,” Zevran says grimly.

“There are,” Thom replies, “but we have given the region a respite for now. It is time I returned to Weisshaupt.”

“Hmm,” Zevran says. “And the future blows in from the east once more.”

“What will you do now?”

“Me? Perhaps I shall follow your example and roam the lands of Thedas, spreading cheer and gifts wherever I go.”

“Dare I ask what you mean by cheer and gifts?”

“I think that if you dare to ask, then you already know the answer.”

“Well,” Thom says, reaching into his pack and retrieving a small package. “Here’s a gift to get you started.”

“Oh, but you shouldn’t have!” Zevran says with a broad grin. The grin falls off his face as he tears the paper to reveal a wooden crow.

It’s some of Thom’s finest work. The crow is mid-flight, its wings spread wide, each of its feathers lovingly detailed. Beneath its left eye is a tiny, intricate vallaslin.

“To escape the gilded cage,” Thom says, “and to ride the currents of the tempest.”

Zevran looks up at him, a dazed expression on his face. “So sentimental,” he murmurs, then surges forward and kisses him hard on the mouth. Thom hardly has time to react before Zevran steps away. He can still feel the warmth of his mouth against his.

“Stay,” he says quickly. “I…you said you were lucky to travel with people who made you wiser and better.” He takes a deep breath. “I think I could use some of that fortune myself.”

The smile on Zevran’s face is brighter than the sun. “Oh, my dear,” he says. “So could I.” He looks down at the crow in his hands. “And I did tell you,” he adds.

“Tell me what?”

Zevran sidles over, slinging his pack over one arm and slipping the other through Thom’s own. “I can be tremendously patient.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Wintertree for the 2018 Black Emporium exchange, who asked for a story about two Warden "sad sacks" coping in different ways. This pairing would never have crossed my mind in a million years, but my whole brain lit up when I saw the prompt. I loved writing this, and I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Because this is set post-Trespasser, I've called Blackwall "Thom" throughout the fic. Zevran's line about knives and tongues is a reference to [this](http://pettyartist.tumblr.com/post/119664100125/i-apologize-in-advance-because-i-am-99-sure-this) iconic tumblr post. 
> 
> The title comes from Lord Huron's "Hurricane."


End file.
